Melanie Phillips muses on the extinction of reason

Hugh Kenneth:

So we shouldn’t be concerned about mercury?

Only if it breaks free from its orbit. :D I would be concerned about CO2 if the levels became as low as 150PPM. That is when plants start dying. And we would follow. I would also be concerned about CO2 if the levels became so high that we could no longer breath the air without some sort of manmade aid. But that may mean we have cleared the planet of most trees and plants. That said, what a desperate fool you must be to try to change the subject from CO2 to mercury. And mercury is on the list of TOXIC POLLUTANTS. So you must be a clueless, desperate fool. How many thermometers do you suck down a day? ET

”The only reason to be concerned about CO2 is if it was a pollutant.” So we shouldn’t be concerned about mercury? Mercury levels in tuna are due to natural sources. But feel free to eat all of the tuna you would like. Although, given the nature of many of your comments, it wouldn’t surprise me if tuna made up the majority of your diet. Hugh Kenneth

The only reason to be concerned about CO2 is if it was a pollutant. ET

“CO2 is not a pollutant.” Neither are phosphorus, ammonia, mercury, arsenic, cyanide, hydrocarbons or curare. That doesn’t seem to be much of an argument why we shouldn’t be concerned about them. Hugh Kenneth

Doubter- I would love to see the data that says something can lose all its heat, get less than 4% back, and get warmer. The earth is NOT like a car with the windows up or a greenhouse. Slowing down the descent to an unsteady equilibrium is all GHG's do. And that alone skews the daily temperatures. GHG absorption spectrum ET

ET@5 The three narrow bands of carbon dioxide absorption are only about 8% of total black body radiation, but that still amounts to a lot of heat energy. From https://skepticalscience.com/empirical-evidence-for-co2-enhanced-greenhouse-effect.htm :

"The temperatures are going up, just like the theory predicted. But where’s the connection with CO2, or other greenhouse gases like methane, ozone or nitrous oxide? The connection can be found in the spectrum of greenhouse radiation. Using high-resolution FTIR spectroscopy, we can measure the exact wavelengths of long-wave (infrared) radiation reaching the ground. How do we know more CO2 is causing warming? An enhanced greenhouse effect from CO2 has been confirmed by multiple lines of empirical evidence.

The Figure 1 spectrum of green house radiation is as actually measured at ground level. It's measured in radiance (W/(cm*2 steradian cm*-1)).

"Spectrum of the greenhouse radiation measured at the surface. Greenhouse effect from water vapour is filtered out, showing the contributions of other greenhouse gases (Evans 2006). Sure enough, we can see that CO2 is adding considerable warming, along with ozone (O3) and methane (CH4). This is called surface radiative forcing, and the measurements are part of the empirical evidence that CO2 is causing the warming."

doubter

seversky:

So Melanie Phillips is resorting to attacking the messenger – in this case the BBC – rather than the message?

That is an evolutionist's tactic. Evos do that all of the time. They ignore the message and attack the messenger as if that will do something to the message. CO2 still only absorbs/ emits in 3 different wavelengths. Only TWO of those are in the thermal range and only ONE of those two is significant. At least 92% of what the earth emits is invisible to CO2. And less than half of that is emitted back towards the earth. That means you have to be a fool on an agenda to think that CO2 is a problem with respect to climate change. Urban heat islands are real. Trash is real. 95% of ocean trash comes from just TEN rivers, eight of which are in Asia. Soot on glaciers causes them to melt even in freezing temperatures. Real pollution that needs real solutions. CO2 is not a pollutant. ET

as to:

“As climate change is accepted as happening, you do not need a ‘denier’ to balance the debate”.

And yet there are many reasons to 'deny' that the world is doomed to catastrophic anthropic global warming unless man basically shuts down all modern industry. For instance, all the computer models, of the climate scientists themselves who 'accept' and preach that catastrophic global warming is happening, have failed to predict the real world temperatures:

Climate models are fudged, says climatologist – Video Anthony Watts - July 2, 2019 Dr. Patrick Michaels, former Virginia State Climatologist has some strong comments about climate models during an interview with Mark Levin: “It is nowhere near as warm as it’s ‘supposed’ to be,” says climatologist Dr. Patrick Michaels. “The computer models are making systematic, dramatic errors.” There are 32 different computer models used to predict the climate, all of them run by government entities. And all of those models, except for the Russian model, are predicting far, far too much warming. The Russian model pretty much matches reality. https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/07/02/climate-models-are-fudged-says-climatologist-video/ Here’s a graph that plots “real time” satellite and weather balloon data of actual global temperatures vs. the 102 of the U.N.’s IPCC CMIP-5 computer projection models. https://4k4oijnpiu3l4c3h-zippykid.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/michaels-102-ipcc-models-vs-reality.jpg Notice that the average of all the computer models show run away global warming while the real data does not. Here is an article that goes along with the graph above: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/05/29/when-will-climate-scientists-say-they-were-wrong/

In real science when your model fails to make accurate predictions then your model is considered to be falsified. Yet, climate alarmist ignore the fact that all their models predicting global warming have been falsified by the real world data. This is a sure sign that we are not dealing with any real objective science in any meaningful sense when is comes to the belief in catastrophic anthropic global warming but are instead dealing with an socialist ideology that seeks to instill and exploit unfounded fears in man in order to gain control of the government and our lives.

KNOWLES: The Real Reason The Left Pushes Climate Change Excerpt: On Wednesday’s episode of “The Michael Knowles Show,” the host discusses the Left’s promotion of climate change paranoia and explains that it is a ploy to present socialism as a cure for all of the Earth’s woes. Video and partial transcript below. The purpose of these predictions is not to warn you, it's not to predict what's actually going to happen. It is to create a panic and then get us socialism by the backdoor. This sounds almost conspiratorial. If I didn't have a video, I guess you wouldn't have to believe me, but it just keeps happening. All the predictions from the late 60s, to the 70s, to the 80s. The whole world is going to end in 10 years if you don't give us socialism and then what happens? Ten years go by and the world doesn't end and everything's perfectly fine and the predictions are all wrong. And they tell us, no, but it's really going to end in 10 years if you don't give us socialism. It's all about taking control of your property, of your liberty, of your government. They say this environmental catastrophe that's going to destroy the world, just coincidentally, requires that you have to give the political left every single policy they've wanted for a hundred years. That's the only way to solve it and save the world. https://www.dailywire.com/news/48361/knowles-real-reason-left-pushes-climate-change-daily-wire

If socialists succeed in scaring people into giving them, basically, unlimited power over their lives because of this global warming hoax, then the misery that people will endure because of that socialism, (i.e. Venezuela, North Korea, China, Tanzania, Sri Lanka, Nicaragua, etc..), will make the imagined catastrophes of global warming seem mild by comparison, bornagain77

So Melanie Phillips is resorting to attacking the messenger - in this case the BBC - rather than the message? She ignores the fact that the industries and economies of all developing and developed nations have become accustomed to exploiting the natural resources of this planet without regard to the damage that might be caused to the environment in which we all live and which we all need to survive. I look at the waste products thrown out weekly by just my household - mostly single-use packaging - which is a miniscule fraction of the waste generated daily by our societies - and think we allow our companies to get away with far too much irresponsible behavior.. They manufacture and profit greatly from all these products but leave the disposal of all the waste they create to others - mainly taxpayers like you and me.. This has to change. President Trump rolls back Obama-era regulations requiring car makers to produce more fuel-efficient vehicles and takes legal action to revoke the waiver which allows California to impose even more stringent regulations. His absurd rationale is that it will lead to cheaper and safer cars. Cheaper and safer for whom? Vehicles with poorer mpg means that owners will have to buy more gas to power them and pour more pollution out of their tailpipes into the air we all breathe.. But there are many of his supporters who will swallow that hook,line and sinker just because he says it.. Electric vehicles (EVs) are not the ultimate solution either. Electric vehicles wear out and break down like all other vehicles and have to be disposed of. And what about all the spent battery packs? Not only are they hideously expensive to make and for owners to replace but how do we handle their disposal? As EV numbers grow, they will need more electricity to charge them which means more power-stations. The limits pf current science and technology means these power-stations either burn fossil fuels in the form of coal, oil and natural gas or use nuclear. Some are trying to push nuclear as a "clean" solution because it don't emit pollution in the same way as fossil-fuels. That quietly ignores all the extremely dangerous and extremely long-lasting radioactive waste materials that they leave behind and which have to be stored somewhere because, currently, we have no other way of dealing with them. Phillips quotes Petteri Taalas, the secretary-general of the World Meteorological Organization as dismissing the effects of global climate change by saying "In parts of the globe living conditions are becoming worse, but people have survived in harsh conditions.” Is he serious? There are upwards of 7 billion people on the planet now and that number is growing exponentially. If global climate change leads to crop yields declining and fresh water supplies dwindling or drying up altogether in some parts of the world the answer is not to tell the billions affected "Stop whining, we've been through worse" Because we haven't. There is the potential here for a global disaster on a scale humanity has never faced before. And don't think that the populations affected are going to sit there and tough it out just because some wealthy Westerners tell them to. If these effects really take hold then we are going to see mass migration on a scale that dwarfs what is happening now and, if they are really desperate, they are not going to be deterred by tighter immigrant regulations or border walls. If your life and those of your loved ones are on the line then you are going to do whatever is necessary to try and protect them. And Melanie Phillips complains about the BBC being biased in favor of covering the dangers of climate change? That speaks for itself, I'd say. Seversky

Muses? Muses? That’s musing? Persuasive. Clear. Trenchant. Factual. Belfast

The carbon cultists enthrone Reason in exactly the same way that Robespierre did. Both really mean abstract numbers and abstract logic, owned by OUR ideology and serving OUR ideology. The metric system illustrates the point. Older systems of measurement were based on natural references. The weight of a barleycorn, the length of a human foot. These references were not precise, but they were always AVAILABLE. Anyone could calibrate his own ruler or scale if necessary. The divisions in old measurement were also available. After you calibrate your length of rope, you could fold it in half repeatedly. Metric severed the ties to nature and replaced available sources with standards kept under lock and key in Paris. Those standards could be changed any time the Directoire chose to change them, and ordinary people couldn't check the change against real objects. The carbon cult has its own standards and measurements, which are emphatically NOT available to ordinary people. The raw data is not available, and the statistical methods of analysis are not public. Michael Mann owns the methods, and he can change them any time he wants. polistra